You gotta have friends
Once upon a time, I didn’t feel like I had many friends. I didn’t, really. The one close friend I had – the one I considered my best friend, turned out to not be so much of a best friend. At least not in my definition. It took me a long while to trust anyone after that. Not that the "best friend" had done anything to betray that trust – but I didn’t trust that anyone was really MY friend.
Then I met another person who turned out to truly be a friend, not because I could do anything for her or anything – she just wanted to be MY friend. We’ve seen each other through some really hard times, as well as some pretty good times. She’s the one I trust with everything – every deep, dark, OMG secret of mine, she has it.
Along the way, I’ve made other friends. Good friends. Perhaps even BEST friends to join that first one. These are women who ask "how are you?" and really want to know the answer. These are people who are also struggle with life sometimes, but also take the time out to care about someone else’s life. They are the ones who know what kind of year I’ve had, and why. They’re the ones who offered a supportive shoulder, listened to me cry, and they weren’t afraid to make suggestions that I didn’t necessarily want to hear. THESE are the friends who didn’t wait to ask "are you ok?" until after I’d said hello to them on some chat. THEY ASKED FIRST.
Now that my life has sort of resumed it’s normalcy, I think a LOT about the friends that saw me through what was truly the worst year in my life. I was thinking about them this morning, and I came to a strange realization. THEY’RE ALL YOUNGER THAN ME. Every single friend – close friend – is younger than me. Some are significantly younger than me! I have no idea why, except maybe I remind them of some aunt or something that they had. Maybe it’s because I have a tendancy to mother people. I don’t know. I DO know that I’ll be eternally grateful of these friends. Thank you doesn’t seem to be nearly enough, but Thank You Amanda, Angel & Jane. I love you.
And a footnote. My brother Tommy & my sister Heather were also absolutely, 100% there for me during this year. They supported any decision I would tentatively make, and the one I ultimately made. They are unequivocally the BEST siblins in the entire UNIVERSE.
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What a difference
A year ago at this time, I really thought I would lose everything. I thought I’d lose my family – I couldn’t keep it together – I couldn’t get through a day without sobbing, I didn’t even want to get out of bed.
Now, here I am a year later – enrolled in school full time, taking photos again, finding my house again… It was a very long, very HARD 365 days, but I came through it.
I’m proud of myself.
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I think it’s time
The last year of my life has been, without a doubt in my mind, the hardest I’ve lived in 44 years.
In fact, the very fact that it’s been that difficult should have been the reason why I blogged MORE, not less. I blame this on myself (as usual) because I didn’t want too many people to become privvy to what was going on with me. I’m not referring to my stomach problems – which, although unresolved, are at least being treated and I live, mostly, pain free. I’m referring to the mental problems, the family problems, the relationship problems that I’ve been facing for almost 365 days.
It’s been a very difficult year to put down in words – other than the tearfilled im messages I’ve shared with a few select friends. I realized, though, the REAL friends, and the ones who only talked the talk, but didn’t walk the walk. You know – the ones who, after hearing about what you’re going hrough, NEVER come back to inquire if you’re ok – if you need anything, if you need a shoulder, nothing.
My year has been one of pain. Of self-flaggelation. Of minor victories and major setbacks. Of unspeakable heartbreak.
While I don’t want to delve into it here, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that the Nursery has fulfilled it’s purpose and will be tucked away on a shelf – or at least printed out and placed in a notebook on the shelf. I haven’t blogged, really, about my kids and their lives in a mightly long time, because I’ve come to realize that the words I write might come back to bite them in the ass – because the Internet isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. Blogging about their foibles seems cute for a little while, but not anymore. My son is 15 now – certainly old enough to look up his mom on the Internet and see what she’s written about inthe past. But what I fear is what HIS FRIENDS might find, and then hold against him.
So I’ll be closing the Nursery door, seeing as my "baby" is almost 5, too. The domain, dawnandjimmy.us, will remain, because page rank still talks to me, but it’ll be reborn, when I figure out what that new birth will entail. Perhaps I’ll regail you all with stories of lives I should have led, rather than the one I’ve found myself leading. Perhaps I won’t write at all. I don’t know. I just feel like I need to close this door. You know?
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Held Hostage
Not me personally – but my blogs – nearly ALL OF THEM – have been held hostage by some schmuck who decided to hack a wordpress insecurity (wordpress security is an oxymoron), so I can’t log in to the admin panels – but I suppose this is a poor excuse for not blogging. I’ve been overwhelmed by the enormous task of attempting to edit the dastardly code out of all the blogs affected – which translates to over 500 lines of code to have to edit individually. It sucks. Hackers suck.
If I were to move my blog to another host, I’d lose the last 5 years of posts because I can’t even get a clean backup of my files – the infection has been in there that long.
I guess I felt that no one reads my blogs anymore anyway, so why bother blogging. I’ve noticed that a number of bloggers have given up blogging – the ones that’ve been around about as long as I have – that have just come to the end of their blogging road. I don’t think I’m there yet – although I find that I am more aware now that, at least for my oldest, his friends could easily find my blog and then he has lost his privacy – so I can’t really blog much about him.
I’m also more aware of what I’m posting in terms of my own life – and realizing that what I write can be held against me if I vent about things – so I need to censor myself even more.
Once it becomes a task to analyze everything I write to make sure I’ve not given anyone more fuel for their fire, it’s just another task – like fixing my blogs – that I don’t want to tackle.
I don’t know if I want to continue blogging or not. I miss the community, though I don’t read pretty much anyone but Jane anymore. But I’ve always felt that blogging has helped me, mentally, to sort things out – figure them out – or maybe just get them out of my head. I don’t know.
Also, my life has continued to spiral out of control, and that also leaves me with "i don’t know."
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